The Economics of a Commune in the Ozarks
eastwindblog.co
eastwindblog.co
So you'd have 2-3 people working remotely in tech, bringing in 100k USD each (low estimate for full time, or maybe they don't want to work full time).
Another 4-6 people working in the commune and handling the cooking, maintenance, working the farm/garden, child care, etc.
And since it's a commune, the money earned by the remote workers is put into a common pool and used to buy all the food, medical insurance, health care, clothes, etc. The farm would probably provide all the meat and a lot of the vegetables, but you'd still need to buy a lot of other foods.
And hopefully, eventually the commune would figure out a successful business and the remote developers could eventually quit and work on the commune as well, if they wanted =)
Thoughts?
> And hopefully, eventually the commune would figure out a successful business and the remote developers could eventually quit and work on the commune as well, if they wanted =)
Who would work at the business? Would the commune eventually turn into an investment bank?
I am thinking a business that produces something tangible, something along the lines of the nut butter factory. Ideally, it would make use of some part of your commune or the local community. But I suppose an investment bank would work if that was what your other members were interested in =)
Heck, maybe the other people want to do tech stuff too and collectively you launch a site or app or something.
But with only 4-6 people I think the kind of business really depends on the interests and abilities of the group.
> while carrying a bunch of others financially You can think of it like that but I don't think that's really a true sentiment.
Think of what you, the tech worker, are getting out of the arrangement:
* you get to live on a working farm
* organic home cooked meals partially made from your own home grown ingredients
* all your meat & eggs are self raised and high quality
* your kids are raised on your property by your extended family, and you have babysitters whenever you need it
* your SO (who is one of the 4-6 others), who can't find a good job living in the country, becomes more than just a "stay at home parent" and can do fulfilling and interesting things on the farm commune
As a solo person, or couple, can you get this by working full time and then paying for it?
Sure, you can live in the country, and you can buy all your food from farmers markets, and you can pay for babysitters and childcare, and you might be able to get a similar result, but it just seems more fun if you can do it with some of your close family & friends who have similar ideals.
Most of this I can get, assuming I'm the one pulling down the 1st world software dev salary.
Obviously, those on the commune who only have basic skills of food prep, farming, child care, etc. wouldn't be able to afford some of this.
So if I'm already able to make this high salary working remotely, I might as well just live in a very low COL country and outsource all this work for a fraction it would cost in the US / EU, instead of subsidizing the low-earners.
* It could be political unstable.
* You might have to pay for 24/7 armed security due to local crime and bad police.
* Locals will constantly be trying to rip you off.
* You will have to learn the local language or be at a huge disadvantage.
* Buying property is going to be tricky and you could get screwed.
* Buying stuff is more difficult because you are in a foreign country. No more amazon.com or any of the cool tech stuff you see on HN (most of that stuff is US/EU only)
* Your family & friends are back in the US. You are very very isolated unless you really want to build a whole new life in the new country.
I have experienced some of these challenges myself, living in Germany and not speaking the language. It's not easy. You might not realize how different it is from the US until you try to do more than just be a tourist. Like, you think you understand the govt and what paperwork you need to do, but it will be completely different in this other country, and all the documentation and forms are in a foreign language. Good luck figuring this out unless you have a trusted local to help you.
So it's not a total slam dunk, there are a lot of trade offs here. That isn't to say it isn't a good option for some people, especially if they know the language. I know a family doing this kind of thing in Indonesia and they are living a great life just by monetizing their youtube videos.
I think for me, it would be a better option if you had some kind of tie to the new country. Maybe a SO that was from there, some extended family, some close friends, just something.
If the commune does ninetieth percentile well they’ll keep drama and internal feuding to a minimum, with no one “stealing” anyone else’s spouse and it’ll eventually turn into a co-op with most people holding a lot of individual property.
A) Chose to be large. Small groups can have a harder time weathering a single bad experience, and have trouble maintaining social dynamism for varied age cohorts
B) Had strong enough systems to exclude free loaders. Everyone’s approach to this differs, but it’s a pre-condition to giving everyone a sense of common ownership and avoiding resentment
C) Found a meaningful business into which new members could be trained relatively easily and that people don’t hate. Programming is unfortunately not a skill that’s easy to teach to sizable fractions of people joining communes, and lots of the people who are attracted to communes want to spend less time on a computer, not more
The communities I'm familiar with are all part of the FEC [0]. There may be other successful longstanding secular communes, but I'm not familiar with others that are still around.
- Twin Oaks: Founded in 1967, tofu and hammocks, large [1]
- Sandhill: Founded in 1974, sorghum, tiny [2]
- East Wind: Founded in 1974, nut butters, large [3]
- Acorn: Founded in 1993, heirloom seeds, medium [4]
Of these, they've all got longstanding businesses which new people can easily plug into. Sandhill is the only exception to the "needs to be pretty big" idea, they had the same small group of very longstanding members for decades and then had turnover recently. Hopefully the new group will make it through, but it's never certain with small groups.
Sandhill also has had Dancing Rabbit next door for the last 20 years, which is large enough to provide a lot of social support that other small communities haven't had. A similar dynamic happened with Acorn as it was getting off the ground down the road from Twin Oaks.
I'd like to talk about one of the things you said earlier:
> Had strong enough systems to exclude free loaders
It does seem like one of the challenges of any "pure" commune would be feelings of contempt for people that you don't feel like are pulling their own weight. Care to talk more about that aspect? What are the systems that you've seen to prevent that?
I feel like you'll never stop some people from "free loading", like if someone is just lazy and does the bare minimum and the quality of the their work is always pretty low, but otherwise they are a great person and a lot of fun to be around - how do you handle that type of situation?
Is it more about creating systems that measure their output and make sure its enough? Or creating systems that prevent other people from feeling contempt towards that person?
That said, let's look at the Twin Oaks labor system: http://www.thefec.org/systems-and-structures/twin-oaks-labor...
From that document: > "Twin Oaks’ labor system requires everybody to plan and record personal labor. This can be a trial, but the organization, accounting, equality, liberty, and flexibility that Twin Oakers enjoy depend substantially upon this minor clerical chore."
In other words, the Twin Oaks system is pretty exacting. You live at Twin Oaks. On Thursday (or whenever), you turn in a labor sheet saying what you intend to do the following week. Let's say you don't have a lot of responsibilities, so you're just saying that you want to help cook dinner on Tuesday afternoon and garden with your friend Shannon on Wednesday morning, but you don't really have other plans. This sheet goes to the labor assigner, who then schedules you for 42 hours of labor for the week and sends it back to you. Then you are responsible for doing what's on the sheet for that week.
If you don't do it, there's a series of consequences, meetings, and if you can't reach some agreed fair contributions, eventually your membership would be revoked.
The East Wind system is less regulated -- you don't need to schedule your activities a week and a half in advance, you can just decide what you want to do when you want to do it. However, you are responsible for writing it down, and working at least 35 hours/week. If you don't, consequences, meetings, eventual removal from the community.
Not all communities have labor accounting or labor sheets, and these systems do not work for everyone, but it seems virtually unavoidable in larger communities where peoples' contributions can become invisible. It's true whether they're slacking way off or if they're working themselves into burnout.
In communities without labor accounting, it's easier in one sense -- you don't have to remember to write shit down and keep track of what time it is, which is nice. It's also most common in communities that are small enough that virtually everyone conferences together daily around the breakfast/lunch/dinner table, and so it's informally easy to distribute responsibilities (e.g., "I've been really busy splitting and hauling firewood all day, but I noticed that the hose spigot in the garden is leaking again. Does anyone have time today to go look at it and figure out what to do?")
As a community gets larger, it becomes harder to see who's overloaded and take that off of them, and it becomes harder for them to distribute work to others. You'd think it would be easier (there's more people!) but in my experience, as a community gets larger, responsibility gets diffused. Somebody Else's Problem Fields pop up on all kinds of projects that people have any reason to believe someone else is going to handle without them having to do anything.
However... this doesn't seem totally true. Kommune Niederkaufugen in Germany, for example, has no required labor system but has 70 members. Each member is part of two different groups: a labor area, and a living group. My poorly-informed opinion is that this system works for them because members get support and create organizational structure within those smaller groups.
& there are always freeloaders. They can lie on their labor sheets, they can take half their time in breaks, they can take credit for others' work, whatever, any system has a method where people can be disingenuous about their labor contribution. There's also different levels at which people are capable of contributing, both as physical ability and psychological motivation and willingness. Members of communities with collectivized labor need to recognize that sometimes they will be the ones who are capable of "doing more", and sometimes they will not "pull their own weight."
Your example conflates a couple different factors:
> "if someone is just lazy and does the bare minimum and the quality of the their work is always pretty low, but otherwise they are a great person and a lot of fun to be around - how do you handle that type of situation?"
... make your minimum work requirement is something that everyone feels comfortable with actually being a minimum work requirement, reducing the feeling of nervousness and being judged by an unknown standard on behalf of everyone in the community ... allow the workers in an area to set their own standards and for them to give feedback and enforce them among each other, and to ultimately remove people from their work area if they can't improve output based on feedback ... recognize the value of labor contributions outside of business and domestic labor, such as cultivating a social setting that people enjoy living in, casual mediation that reduces tensions between people and groups, and encouraging healthy behavioral outlets for members of the community
for that last bit, I want to point out that you don't need to keep track of those hours in number -- it would be kind of hard -- but simply recognize that if you increase the number of hours that people need to spend working in the business and the kitchen, then you are reducing the number of hours that they have available to do the work that, honestly, is really why you want to live in community with a bunch of people, and that's why you set your minimum labor quota the way that you do.
As mich as i know there is no English version but it is a movie about someone growing up in a commune in Austria in the 70ies. It is a very interesting and sad movie. The "founding father" of this commune spent time in prison because of child molestation and harassment. His mother still thought that he "had a good childhood and time" in the commune without knowing his father. As much as I know from the movie he wasn't molested - but he experienced growing up there as a very strict and unfree experience (I am not sure if this is totally correct, but my memories are shady, I've watched it many years ago)
It's not ideal though. It would be better to have some sort of agricultural tangible export from the community I think.
We also are planning an alt-school system in which instead of going to college, you and 100 other students boot up a cooperative eco-village that you own outright. You’ve got food, shelter and community handled with no loans and then you can focus on other projects, research, etc.
Imagine running this coop with automation and robotics. You could free up more time while increasing the lifestyle of the members.
And of course, I already co-own a $50MM cooperative grocery store with about 16,000 others in NYC (FoodCoop.com)
Are you able to convey this idea in English? It sounds interesting.
Solid basalt rock along with jungle lowlands and plenty of sand.
Right now we have a small group of Founding Family and we are hosting small gatherings (Max 150 people).
While Panama City is about 50km away, we are just 5km from Chiman which is a fishing village with a police station, medical outpost, church, food, etc.
There is also a road being put in between Chiman and the Pan American Highway which will allow for one to drive down and then take a 10min boat ride.
Right now the aesthetic is very much a burning man camp, with people bringing in what is needed and leaving no trace - however we will begin to create some light shared infrastructure.
We also have a small shared ownership stake in a tiny home in Kalu Yala which is an eco village on the mainland.
Come visit sometime!
PS, we don’t plan to export food, our primary export will be culture and transformation — meaning we have companies and individuals who come for coaching / leadership training / etc and for the festival.
This island was formerly called Isla Del Tesoro and it’s sister was Isla Del Piratas. Literally Treasure Island and Pirate Island.
During the 1500-1600s they were a base for pirates to attack Spanish Treasure ships.
One of my friends parents bought about 100 acres in Belize in the 80s for about $30k. They built a small farm and resort. 5 years ago they discovered a massive Mayan City complete with pyramids and all — it was a secret city that was used as a meeting place for all the leaders. Currently they have an archeological dig - very exciting!
How do people get out there? Floatplane? Panama City looks like the nearest harbor and that's a long boat trip.
What do you do for fresh water? Collect rainwater?
For many of us the remote nature of it is a feature, no EMF (some of our crew is really into not being in range of cell or WiFi), plus the adventure to get there is a filter of sorts.
We bring water with us but yes, with 100” a year we are planning to set up rain water collection as well as exploring the possibility of a well in the lush jungle lowlands. There are some water fall areas as well.
Passive income is a grey area, some people lend their assets to the community to avoid earning passive income, but I don't think that's ever been enforced.
A lot of people have had the idea you have, starting a modern commune... a spectrum from Leo Tolstoy to charles manson. Very few were sustainable in the long term, or scalable. The Kibbutz movement was a rare example that was. Most are semi-privatized these days. A handful are still "traditional" (extreme) with no private property and children raised by the community instead of living with their parents.
Are vegans welcome at this commune?
Dairy and meat are calorie and nutrient dense. There are some fruits/vegetables/nuts that are as well of course, but it sounds like they mostly sell their nut butters.
The best nut butter is when they switch production from almond butter to cashew butter, there's like 50lbs of nut butter that comes out that is (::gasp!::) mixed in unknown amounts, so it can't be sold with accurate packaging. Hot tip, almond/cashew butter is amazingly delicious regardless of what proportions you mix it in.
For common meals, East Wind wasn’t quite as on top of the wide variety of dietary preferences people express as Twin Oaks was last time I checked, but vegans are most definitely welcome.
The FEC has frequent meetings, practices labor exchange between their communities, and generally will enthusiastically help you understand historical approaches to income-sharing, and help you build systems and structures of your own.
Be aware they will generally recommend that you try living in an existing income-sharing community for a year to get a handle on community dynamics and systems before you go off and found your own new community. New communities have a habit of falling apart because of either poor systems, or founder-syndrome where the founder wants to be egalitarian, but is so invested in their dream that they alienate their allies by refusing to let go and trust other people.
Also, people who want to join income-sharing communities tend to range from very- to extremely-anti-authoritarian. This can be hard for founders, who are trying to get stuff done and think they can keep doing things they way they did when they got started.
So founding is hard, you really need good systems, good co-founding community members, and the ability to detach and trust-but-verify the energetic but unproven new members that will inevitably make or break your community.
They often used Wikis and other distributed messaging platforms to trade tips. It was really fascinating to read.
I love the FEC communities, though!
If my wife was up for it, I'd happily move back. One of the challenges of commune life is certainly the size of the dating pool.
See my three essay series on the subject: http://tlalexander.com/wealth/ http://tlalexander.com/machine/ http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
See also the philosophy of Communalism: http://www.communalismpamphlet.net/
There are many other people interested in this. One enthusiastic online community I’ve found is this one: https://tkcooptech.tumblr.com/ They have a discord I can invite you to if you email me (see profile).
Finally see my discussion site on building automated societies at http://reboot.love
I believe the reboot concepts (more developed in my head than in my writing) can extend to whole cities and beyond. I think smaller communes could popularize the ideas and free up some people to be more politically active. The small communes would be a vanguard but the goal is to reach everyone, not just rich techies who want to unplug.
If the tech people are married to non-tech people, would that change the equation?
My own ideology is likely incompatible with this sort of living, but I fully support it!
I live about 90 minutes SW of East Wind. This truly is one of the most beautiful areas of the country, and a great place to live a rural life.
Another counter example (though not from the 70s) is Dancing Rabbit. It is 25 years old and doesn't have a centralized business, though people there often do cited difficulty finding work as a problem, and a leading reason to not stick around.
Also Earthhaven in NC has no central business and is 23 years old.
The Farm stopped being an income-sharing commune many decades ago. Now it’s more like a co-housing community, with private ownership or control of most things.
Dancing Rabbit’s founding income sharing group disbanded many years ago, but it’s core mission wasn’t about being income sharing, and the community continued just fine without having an income-sharing subcommunity.
Earthhaven was never income-sharing, to the best of my knowledge.
So I don’t think any of these are really counter-examples; a business that new members can plug into (and a mechanism to exclude free-loaders, which The Farm didn’t really have) are both really important for a long-term successful income-sharing commune.
Many of the older folks who leave go to Twin Oaks, which is much more restrictive and thus tends to have less drama.
But many people have chosen to live out their golden years at East Wind. It’s a great place to get lots of youthful energy, and avoid the isolation of modern American culture.
There are also a good number of long term members with memberships of 20,25,30, and one with 40 years.
At East Wind there is retirement after 25 years "on the system" as well as medical retirement.
You mean "entitlement". In the US, "rights" are inherent and natural things; those outlined in the constitution are "negative rights" in that they are prohibitions on the government infringing upon them.
As such, "medical care" doesn't make sense as a right, because it's a service provided to you, not inherent to you in the sense that speech or association between individuals.
Of course, "entitlement" as a word comes with a negative connotation around here, but that's also because most or all entitlements are means-tested and not available to everyone.
As for you the cost, you're spot on. Insurance for myself and my wife is roughly $1000 / month (paid for by my company of 8 people). An active lifestyle won't compensate for things like pregnancy, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, glaucoma, arthritis, or any other of the innumerable ways that our bodies have yet to catch up with our lifespans.
I think they are better terms. Privileges impose an obligation on others. Rights do not. Positive right is very similar to the equivalent alternative term (privilege) but negative rights unnecessarily confuses the conversation. Is there an impact on others and is it really negative? It appears to simply be used in the opposite of positive right but the adjective negative is misleading.
Guess we'd better scrap that whole "right to an attorney" portion of due process, then.
Fix: Allow people to sell, or sell shares in, their right to sue.
The fact that this is not more popular suggests that litigation is not efficient for the rich, either. In the end it only enriches the lawyers.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_financing [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15249825
"You have the right to have an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you by the court." is the language intended to be used in the Miranda warning; and it is not so much that you have a right to an attorney, but that your right to a speedy and public trial (...and to have the Assistance of Counsel for [your] defence) combines with the state's mandate to prosecute your case to produce a mandate to provide you an attorney.
The "right to an attorney" is a colloquialism for referring to the state's obligation to fulfill the requirements of a constitutional trial if they want to try at all, which in practice either means the state hires public defenders, or the state can not try you (though this wasn't done in practice until it was interpreted this way in court).
There are other legal colloquialisms such as "jury nullification", which is an emergent behaviour rather than an explicit one.
Exactly. The "right to an attorney" is actually intended to be a check on government power and it's not an economic entitlement like food stamps. One can see in the Declaration of Independence that the complaints included a "right to a speedy trial" and "right to a trial by jury" because the monarchy government was abusing its power and throwing people in prison on arbitrary whims. That's where the right to have an attorney came from. We should note that the USA does not provide government-funded lawyers for suing your landlord, incorporating your company, or filing your patent application. (Maybe the government should but that's a different conversation.)
If the government is the adversary in criminal prosecution and they can take a citizen's life & liberty away via prison sentence or capital punishment, that is the limited case where the government will provide an attorney. When the government is the opponent in other departments such as the IRS disputing taxes owed, or SEC investigating financial disclosures, there is no "right to an attorney" in those cases to help the citizen fight them in court -- unless it turns into a criminal prosecution.
I also hesitate to describe any right at a check on power. That suggests planning, an overall design. There is no grand master plan. We have a series of rights rooted in history and tradition. Religion has played a large part. The system has never been designed. Even the founders writing of the constitution was really just a tweeking of some longstanding ideas.
The percieved "balance" is fiction. Other countries have very different rights and do not tip into chaos. Canada lacks the right to a jury trial, and yet somehow isnt a lawless dictatorship. The UK has a very different concept of free speech, yet the BBC is probably the most trusted source of news on the planet. Other systems work, perhaps better.
I suppose you don't consider a sort of grand, overarching code of laws, as constituting any sort of plan? And if there was a plan, would you imagine that there would be sort type of foundational precepts of that plan - a sort of legal "constitution," as it were? And if there was any type of plan, do you think there would be any group of people, or maybe men specifically (if it were a centuries old plan), who founded it?
The claim isn't that the constitution was wholly novel out the time, or that it is the only type of legal system that can (or even necessarily does) lead to a long running stable government. The claim isn't that the plan is immutable, or tightly controlled by a singular central authority. The claim is just that the US legal system was, literally, planned.
Arguging that the BBC (or really any singular news source in 2018) is "probably the most trusted source of news on the planet" is a hyper-contentious claim. And this is the UK's "freedom of speech" -
Article 10: Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
edit: added and emphasized that the UK's freedom of expression is not a foundational part of UK law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Econ...
If you can keep your income low and lifestyle high; you benefit and don’t need to contribute to things like wars you don’t like.
Also, since insurance is now required, best to qualify for the free version.
Living below the poverty line with luxury is essentially the world that folks want to achieve with UBI and robotics / AI.
Perhaps it’s possible now.
The FEC’s self-insurance fund generally covers major medical expenses, but communities are expected to get the best deal they can for medical expenses, which includes exploring self-insured discounts and public assistance where available.
I agree the photos seem to be of young people. But some of them are at a distance etc. So I wouldn't assume this is accurate.
When I was 48, someone who thought I was the older sister of my adult sons -- and pegged their ages accurately -- guessed that I was 30. I have been repeatedly mistaken for their older sister.
If you remain physically active, you can appear younger than you are. This doesn't guarantee that you don't have health issues. (I have a serious medical condition.)
I think it's just the rest of us look older )
If that is a right, then someone has an obligation to provide it. "The government" isn't a provider, some doctor is and they aren't forced to work for free.
There are a combination of factors that limit outlays for the community: As you note, the demographics skew young (in any given year, there is usually a sizable older cohort, but a lot of people move to Twin Oaks [1] as they get older).
Additionally, almost everyone is low-income, and thus people are eligible for subsidized routine health care through the state (although Missouri is pretty stingy).
Finally, mostly people just don’t choose to consume much healthcare.
[0] http://thefec.org
[1] http://twinoaks.orgWithout the profit from their nut butter, what would it look like?
Or does maintaining a nice commune basically require you to figure out some kind of profitable business? In that case, maybe it is fairly common because the ones that don't, don't last?
Been running since the 60s and offers the cheapest and freshest food in NYC.
FoodCoop.com
There are similarities however and much to be learned. We even have a cash and labor fund to help others start cooperatives.
Out of the thousands that started in the 60's and 70's, these survived because they all had and have successful businesses.
Furthermore, I'd venture to say that most successful intentional communities run a business. The ones that don't probably rely on outside donations or government assistance.
Anecdotally, my father kept free roaming chickens, with extra feed, and he always said maize is what makes eggs yellow (though we say "red" in Italian), compared to a "mixed seeds & beans" feed.
Maybe someone knows better.
I know a lot more about cattle and hogs. Some of their numbers seemed odd to me. The dairy seems about right — for a standard 305 day lactation 8,000 lbs would be a decent cow, and 10,000 very good. So 35,000 lbs for 4-ish is pretty good and indicates a good feeding plan. The beef and hog finish weights, though, just seem strange. I suspect those are really bad guesses and not actual weights.
So I'm with you. It's not better living, but just diet.
1. Externally developed, researched, and applied healthcare.
2. Externally generated and supplied electricity, through what I presume is externally-supplied infrastructure.
They're not fully bootstrapping off of merely what they have present, though I won't fault them for it by any means. It's just something to keep in mind.
This community can only exist because it's a tiny minority surrounded by a much larger, depersonalized, "dirty" society which handles all the big problems for them. Problems including: National defense, international relations, technological research and infrastructure, advanced education, manufacture/import/transport of all kinds of exotic goods and medicines, law enforcement, care of the elderly.
It's easy to say it's a better way to live, until you realize that it can only exist because it's held up by all the people paying the costs of the "worse" way.
As a thought experiment: Think of how much different our larger society could be if there was some sort of alien galactic society that handled those kinds of problems for us.
I think people who worship competition take for granted the fundamental importance of cooperation, indeed to what degree cooperation handles many of the big problems for them.
My criticism is that it doesn't scale and they're freeloaders. And you can bet if enough people started dodging taxes like this, the IRS would be on the case. But it's small scale so they get away with it.
I don't think they're doing something morally wrong, to be clear. Just that it can't scale.
Other farms pay tax fully, and my criticism doesn't apply.
There was a time, for that matter, where most of the U.S. economy was agrarian. The world still worked. There were fewer government services, to be sure- but if most people are members of semi-self-sufficient communities, fewer services would be needed.
Eating food grown and prepared by other people in a community of 70+ people, in exchange for your labor in other areas, and paying no tax on any of it.... tax dodge.
How many people does it have to be, in your opinion, before it's a tax dodge?
However, East Wind is incorporated as a 501(d) organization, which is what monasteries use. For more info on 501(d) orgs: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part7/irm_07-025-023
I can't find anything specific, but I think that since they share their income and produce as a collective, they're only liable for taxes on their share of the income that the collective produces. Monks don't have to pay taxes on the value they get from the monastery vegetable garden.
Tax avoidance is a time-honored American tradition. This is one way to do so. It sounds like they've done their legal homework if they've managed to survive 30 years without IRS trouble.
+ Nobody making food is wearing gloves or hair nets (aside from the one guy making cheese). That's probably not a requirement, but given the amount of food being made and how bad even minor contamination would be, that surprises me.
+ Any large food operation is going to require a lot of sanitation/cleanliness. They also mention they don't use "anything not natural". I wonder if that extends to bleach and commercial cleaners.
+ $150 for a discretionary fund to cover cellphone and a car is nothing. That won't cover a single car breakdown.
+ I wonder how well they will handle a serious medical cost. One person with an autoimmune disease will easily wipe out their cash on hand - as will a chainsaw accident.
It's an interesting thing to follow, but I'm happy to be merely an observer.
East Wind’s food businesses, particularly nut butters, are of course inspected and licensed by the health department. Most of the photos you’re seeing are of food production for community consumption.
FEC communities have a self-insurance fund to cover catastrophic health costs, and seek state subsidies when available, which they often are for low-income people who live on communes.
But you’re right that chronic illnesses that need continuous expensive medical care can be a strain on community finances. The community agrees to cover those expenses.
I think a lot of people don't really grasp what that commitment really means. My twins were born three months early, and each cost about a million dollars in NICU services - and they had minimal complications. My family alone would've cost this commune 40 years worth of their current medical care spending just for the first year.
Do you wear gloves and a hair net when you cook your own food? I've been cooking my own food daily for over 10 years now, and I have yet to experience even a minor contamination. I don't see how bumping the amount of cooked food to feed ~70 people would change this.
My experiences in all those places where good: It was clean, always, and I never saw anything that would have me question their methods or (food) results.
Nobody ever wore gloves though, as far as I can remember (I certainly didn't). You needed a health certificate from a doctor. I think we had hair nets in either the meat processing or the chocolate factory, or both, don't remember, and in the camp kitchen. But no gloves. I don't think they add any significant benefit. Covering the head may often be beneficial, depending on the concrete setup. You don't want hair in food even if the hair is clean, and you don't wash hair as frequently as hands (especially when preparing food).
If a commercial kitchen making food for 73 people gets an egg contaminated with salmonella and then spreads that to all the other dishes it's making... well, that's quite a different problem.
I also know that I wash my hands, and I sanitize every cooking surface in my kitchen daily (or more often). A kitchen with 6+ full time cooks and 70 some people helping themselves to snacks is liable to much more tracked in dirt, unwashed hands, and badly washed dishes.
One of the things I do is infuse alcohols, often in bulk for gifts. When I do this, my sanitation protocol actually changes - I pre-sanitize every vessel using bleach, and I often times do wear gloves if I'm touching anything directly.
Consider this: If you had a small cut on your hand, would you wear gloves before making yourself lunch? What if it was a stranger with a cough making your lunch, would you want them to wear gloves?
Eggs are the only food that fits this narrative, and they are only (very rarely) dangerous if eaten raw. I would be more concerned about eating eggs from a holiday inn breakfast buffet.
>I also know that I wash my hands, and I sanitize every cooking surface in my kitchen daily (or more often).
I've never sanitized my cooking surface. I was taught to use vinegar as a cleaner and have never had issues (it's not a disinfectant). I haven't even had a cold in three years.
>One of the things I do is infuse alcohols, often in bulk for gifts. When I do this, my sanitation protocol actually changes - I pre-sanitize every vessel using bleach, and I often times do wear gloves if I'm touching anything directly.
A few of the things I do are brew beer, wine, kombucha, ferment vegetables, etc. I, too, used to use sanitize all of my bottles and containers. I then read The Art of Fermentation and realized that everything I was doing was moot. Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts do an excellent job of preservation, provided you give them a nurturing environment to thrive in.
>Consider this: If you had a small cut on your hand, would you wear gloves before making yourself lunch? What if it was a stranger with a cough making your lunch, would you want them to wear gloves?
The commune deserves more credit. People who abandon everything to live in a commune take personal interest in caring for one another. You're more likely to pick up something from a stranger with a cough at a restaurant, who didn't call in sick because they're still late on last month's phone bill, than someone at a commune - who could just ask another member to fill in. Keep in mind this is how society was for a long time.
Vinegar is a decent cleaner. I use it quite a bit myself, but it's not the best choice to clean up after raw meats and some other more aggressive bacteria. You may have a good immune system, and not run into any problems - good for you, I'm glad - but that is not going to be the case for any large group of people.
> Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts do an excellent job of preservation
Preservation is not sanitation. Yeast will feed off of many things and grow, but it won't typically attack germs or viruses. Those germs will however gladly feed off of the same food you're giving the yeast. This is why aggressively sanitizing any fermenting vessel is so important - you're creating the ideal environments for bacteria to grow and you want to make sure it's only your selected bacteria that are growing.
> Keep in mind this is how society was for a long time.
That is a myth and falsehood. The work week for the average person going back thousands of years was 60+ hours. There was no vacation or sick leave. Sure, if you had a small cottage industry you might be able to ask a family member to do extra work for a day so you can rest, but for most of history children were pressed into labor at ages 8 - 10.
> People who abandon everything to live in a commune take personal interest in caring for one another
Then they should practice good sanitation and cleanliness. I'm not saying they shouldn't live in a commune, or that they're bad people - I'm saying they are not correctly practicing what we've learned in 10,000+ years of handling food stuffs for a community. If you care for your friend/neighbor/fellow commune-peer, then take a moment to wear gloves and a hair net so you don't get them sick.
Well, anything raw meats touch goes into the dishwasher. I didn't mean to construe the idea that I am re-using surfaces for raw meats.
>Preservation is not sanitation. Yeast will feed off of many things and grow, but it won't typically attack germs or viruses. Those germs will however gladly feed off of the same food you're giving the yeast. This is why aggressively sanitizing any fermenting vessel is so important - you're creating the ideal environments for bacteria to grow and you want to make sure it's only your selected bacteria that are growing.
Yeast don't preserve by attacking germs or viruses, they preserve by creating alcohol - just as LAB preserve by killing germs and viruses via ph. But yes, sanitation and preservation are different - I didn't mean to conflate them.
You don't necessarily need to bleach things to sanitize them. When we wash our hands with warm, soapy water, we aren't killing bacteria, we are reducing the viscosity of our hand oils and wiping them off. The same can be said for most cooking materials/areas.
> vorpalhex 2 hours ago | parent | on: The Economics of a Commune in the Ozarks
Eggs, chicken, pork, even flour can be contaminated - Chipotle (a popular US fast-ish food chain) had woes upon woes until they finally gave it and started pasteurizing their flour. Dairy and meat are more susceptible of course, but even dry ingredients can come with contamination problems. Vinegar is a decent cleaner. I use it quite a bit myself, but it's not the best choice to clean up after raw meats and some other more aggressive bacteria. You may have a good immune system, and not run into any problems - good for you, I'm glad - but that is not going to be the case for any large group of people.
> Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts do an excellent job of preservation
Preservation is not sanitation. Yeast will feed off of many things and grow, but it won't typically attack germs or viruses. Those germs will however gladly feed off of the same food you're giving the yeast. This is why aggressively sanitizing any fermenting vessel is so important - you're creating the ideal environments for bacteria to grow and you want to make sure it's only your selected bacteria that are growing.
> Keep in mind this is how society was for a long time.
That is a myth and falsehood. The work week for the average person going back thousands of years was 60+ hours. There was no vacation or sick leave. Sure, if you had a small cottage industry you might be able to ask a family member to do extra work for a day so you can rest, but for most of history children were pressed into labor at ages 8 - 10.
That's fair, I shouldn't have claimed such a broad statement. It depends which society/time-period we're looking at.
If you're using a high proof liquor you typically don't need to pre-sanitize, but I typically do. You can either boil the jar for 5 minutes (timed) or rinse with bleach.
The more finely cut the fruit is, the more flavor will be absorbed.
I usually let them age for a minimum of 2 months, but up to 6 is preferred. Make sure to use ball jars with fresh wax seals and seal them while hot - once cooled, the lid should have a bit of flex to let you know the seal is unbroken. Make sure to mark contents and date on each one.
I'm most interested in doing herb tinctures (for cocktail additions) in dropper bottles. It's surprising to see that only 3 to 4 days are needed for said infusions. In your experience has this been the case? Keep in mind this would not be drank neat, but rather 3-4 drops used mostly for aroma.
I've only tried one infusion, ginger. It was grated directly into the vodka, left for ~2 weeks, and still turned out relatively flavorless. My ginger beer used about the same mount and was extremely sharp. Maybe I'll give it another go.
And BINGO! You just discovered why healthcare is so expensive. How are you supposed to get people to work for slave wages at Amazon without the looming threat of hospital bills?
And I can't find anything about insurance costs in that article. Surely accident and liability insurance is needed?
Anyway, if so (and certainly similar communities were a thing then), some of the founders from then must be 70+ by now. Were those people eligible for Social Security when they passed age 65? i.e., after 40+ years of employment by an organization that doesn't pay FICA or file W-2's -- or do they? And if they do, why isn't that mentioned in an article on the "economics" of the organization?
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-security-tax-oa...
They pay income tax on the community's income, which is evenly distributed (for taxation purposes, not as actual outlays) to each member, but is not considered wage income, and thus isn't Social Security income.
Since people's taxed 501c6 income generally doesn't require Social Security payments, it's possible to not be eligible for SS at retirement age, but many people worked enough quarters before joining a community, and their SS benefits are contributed as income to the community when they retire.
That fund has paid out $60k for heart surgery for a Twin Oaker, and a $45k emergency helicopter ride for an East Winder.
Taking advantage of state low-income assistance, we manage to enjoy good health care for relatively little.
It can be difficult if you have a career and obligations (mortgages, loans, etc.) to just drop out for a few months of unpaid work, especially since employers generally aren't huge fans of their staff disappearing for 3 months. Some employers are open to letting their staff take a sabbatical though, so it never hurts to ask if you're actually serious about it.
But you can’t join an income-sharing community and “contribute 30% of your post tax salary”. That’s not how it works. It’s an income sharing community. Your income goes to the community, full stop.
Occasionally communities avert their eyes and don’t pay too much attention to passive income from investments, letting that income compound without requiring it be contributed to the community. But even that tends to be a source of much tension.
Income-sharing is intense. It’s a major commitment (while you’re there; you’re always free to leave).
I'd say this is a stretch. Communes can come in all shapes and sizes. Cults are generally centered around a charismatic leader and lack transparency. FEC communities have no central leader, hold land and property in common, and are income sharing.
The Federation of Egalitarian Communities includes these and other allied income-sharing groups.
I'm glad they can make this work for about a hundred or so folks. I wonder what the natural limit for this sort of arrangement is.
For communal arrangements like this, I think the generally accepted value is around 200. See "Dunbar's Number": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
Dunbar's number also has nothing to do with this type of society. The American Amish community (150k population) is basically an anti-modern religious group which is run on a communal model. Many members of that society live all their lives without meeting each other. As another commenter mentioned, Mondragon in Spain has close to 75k members in its cooperative.
Looks like small-batch-industrial, and their customers are other businesses who make organic health food products containing peanut butter.
Apparently they also make sandals: https://www.eastwindblog.co/?page_id=411
There was a movement in the late 1880s for "settlements" where those of a religious persuasion would raise money to open up a one stop community house (health, food, education etc etc)
However that has almost died out. (There are still missions in south london, but they are run for and by the African diaspora, rather than "the poor")
To see something similar to those settlements alive today is wonderful. I would be very interested to see what the social dynamic is there, how conflict and big decisions are handled.
There a few documentaries on "extreme" communes, but I suspect they are outliers, which is why the TV people were interested in them
The back of the envelope math would seem to imply that it costs $17k/person ($6.4k cash + $10.6k Labor (27hrs/week * 7.85/hr * 50 weeks)) PLUS Imputed Rent for their 1,200 acre property (and all the associated infrastructure which could easily be another few thousand dollars a person)
I dislike the term ecovillage as it sounds a bit woo, but the general idea is the same. Contemplated moving to one a few months ago but they were having trouble with planning permission and reed bed wastewater systems.
In the process of setting up PEACH (back in the 80s?), member communities (I think five at the time) paid in a lump sum to start it up. There's a system where a community can pull out their equity if necessary, although the last community to pull out (after their state expanded Medicaid) simply donated it to the general mission of the fund.
There's a protection built into PEACH for long-term illness. It covers 90% automatically during the first year (although the formal decision-making body can make this 100%, or even lower the deductible, if that seems necessary). This percentage decreases during the following years, dropping to 0% being automatically covered after 7 years. This is meant to incentivize communities to be internally self-sufficient -- PEACH is meant to protect communities from failing due to unexpected health care costs. The decision-making body (one representative from each community) can easily make any decisions at their whim that doesn't involve spending more than their annual operating budget. We do sometimes spend more than our annual budget because sometimes accidents come in threes or more. PEACH pays for helicopter evacuations, heart attacks, cancer, strokes, bad forestry accidents, complicated childbirth, etc.
The capital in PEACH is also lent to member communities in emergencies (e.g., after a major structure fire) and sometimes for investing in community land if it's deemed to be a safe investment.
Truly beautiful what people are able to create on their own.
1 https://www.ic.org/directory/ 2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virgini...
Libertarianism is about building a community that you like, in any possible way, without having to agree with anyone else about what is "exploitation" and all that ideological stuff. Libertarianism's goals is exactly aligned with what "hippie communists" (stereotype that I use here in good faith, to omit boring argument about strict ideological definitions) want, as long as they don't try to force their views on other people.
Note that the commune leaves unresolved what to do about "problem individuals" in the larger sense. They just force them out. But if all of society was a commune, what then?
(I'm aware than anarchists claim it's totally possible to democratically run a collective economy and have it work at least as well as a liberal capitalist society. The first has never happened, much less the second.)
The decoupling of the force of law from economic and social arrangements as much as possible is the libertarian argument, here. Having this sort of arrangement at the government level gives you oppression and starvation, while having it at the voluntary level gets you happy, self-selected communes where people brag about growing their own food.
(Having grown up in the country, the idea of growing and cooking one's own food and thus not having to pay retail is less mind-bogglingly amazing for me than it might be for other HN posters.)